The Australian Dream: Australian’s Can Still Be Racist
In sport, in casual conversation and our education system
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that the following article may contain images and voices of deceased persons
Adam Goodes, an Australian AFL icon, Brownlow Medalist, Australian of the Year, a husband, a son, a father and an advocate for Indigenous rights. Goodes is an Indigenous role model to the nation, through the eyes of the AFL industry to the eyes of Indigenous kids growing up in rural communities. Despite the admiration he received, his world would crumble after calling out racism which would create a national backlash. All because he was called an ‘Ape’ at an Indigenous AFL game by a 13-year-old girl.
The backlash Goodes received was coming both online, in the street and on the field. People comparing him to an Ape and people claiming that he ‘needed to shut up about racism’. Even his Australian of the Year was in question despite receiving the award years prior.
The Australian Dream (2019) showed the racist underlying of Australian society, particularly in the Australian sports industry where Indigenous athletes are publicly more ridiculed by coaches, players, news reporters and spectators. As I watched the film I was shocked to realise that these racist undertones are louder and more vibrant than ever. Even after all the referendums, equal opportunities and anti-racial discrimination laws. Racist conversations are happening more casually and more openly and have been ever since the beginning of time.
As an Indigenous teenager watching this documentary, I was shocked to realise how much I could resonate with Stan Grant, Adam Goodes, Nova Peris, Gilbert McAdam and Nicky Winmar. Their experiences almost far too similar to my own. As the documentary progressed, something that McAdam said symbolised what it means to be Aboriginal in Australia. Although I cannot quote word-for-word he simply said that as an Aboriginal you have to keep proving yourself, unlike a white person, who simply proves themselves once and gets away with everything without question.
From the beginning of Australia’s colonisation, Aboriginal people have never been equally recognised in any policy or social structure. Terra Nullius. Those two words started it all. James Cook and colonists believed that Australia was ‘terra nullius’ (no one’s land) back in 1770, despite there being an estimated population of 750,000 Indigenous people occupying the shoreline of New South Wales, Australia and Indigenous people being in Australia for more than 600,000 years. 500 of those years being during European settlement.
They even didn’t follow the proper policy and protocol when it came to the ‘invasion’. According to many British documents produced in the 1700s, the British had established a treaty- ‘the invasion without treaty’. Something that would make many Australians question Australia Day since the Australian Government still fails to recognise what could be now known as a ‘national crime’.
Massacres, mass killings and slavery dominated Indigenous Australias from the time of colonisation till the last mass killing ending in the 1960s in Western Australia. However, despite all these killings, it was only made illegal in 1973 to kill an Aboriginal in Australia. From 1910–1970 nearly a reported 13,830 children were misplaced and taken away from their homes and their culture forcibly and assimilated into ‘White Australia’. Hoping to ‘wash out’ the black.
The director and journalist, Stan Grant touched base on this issue in The Australian Dream, along with Adam Goodes even discussing how despite his generation not being ‘directly affected’ it affects the current generations and their separation from culture. Adam Goodes goes into depth throughout the documentary about the racism he received in school and the hardship he faced with his own identity because of not being able to return to his native land.
McAdam even emphasises and explains to the audience that Terra Nullius is another way of Australia’s Legal System and Society of rejecting the existence of Aboriginal Australians. Given the current and increasing suicide rates, the standard of living, unemployment and low education that affects Indigenous communities, it shows that Australia still has no intention to even consider that Aboriginal people are as equal as they are.
And it shows in today’s footy, today’s bar conversations and in today’s education curriculum.
“Why can’t you get over it?” It’s a common question asked by many non-Indigenous Australians today. It’s been said to Nova Peris after sitting an Olympic dinner when someone told her to ‘pass the salt nigger’. It was said to Nicky Winmar after a Footy Show host, Sam Newman appeared on television with blackface. It was said to Goodes when he called it out via interviews. Not blaming the young girl, but instead blaming the influences on the young girl that would’ve made her believe that calling him ‘ape’ was the ‘right thing to do’.
Social marginalism still happens today, even in the most subtle ways that are always unconscious and deniable in any perspective. Comments like ‘they bludge of everything’ or ‘they sook about x, y and z’ influence girls like her into thinking that calling an AFL player at an Aborignal Game ‘Ape’ is the right thing to do. In fact, her mother said that “she’s only a thirteen-year-old girl, who lives in a country town that doesn’t really get out that much”.
Eddie McGuire, the Collingwood Football Club President, had even tried to rectify the issue with Goodes on the night of the incident. But would go to an interview and joke about ‘Eureka’ and the ‘King Kong’… Even back when Sam Newman had painted his face black McGuire had laughed. Small things like this eventually making it seem okay to society.
Things like the lack of treaty in the invasion, terra nullius, acknowledgment massacres and burial sites as well as exemption birth certificates impact all Indigenous people regardless of age and gender. In fact, our own education curriculum and national history fail to even recognise and cover the mass massacres and genocides of Indigenous people… most of the Australian land being only some of the recognised 140 massacre sites that have been turned in ANZAC sites and small towns as well as mining districts as so forth. All without acknowledgement of burial site.
In fact when Indigenous people are saying Australia Day is Invasion Day, legally Australia did breach an almost international treaty.
To put into some perspective, as McAdam and Winmar said: “they don’t know what it’s like to be black” and to “not know where you came from, who your parents are”. Sam Grant even mentioning “a sunburnt country with sweeping plains” are the places where “my people that were killed, shot and disease ravished on those plains”.
As much as I hate to do this, given that I had family who was ANZAC and currently serving: But imagine if we built a tourist attraction on top of an ANZAC burial site… it’s not nice to think about or do, so why are we doing it? What if we ignored ANZAC deaths and history? Are we taking away Australia’s only form of ‘heroic identity?’
If someone died on that site, you can’t simply get over it, you have to let them rest in peace… right?
What if we told someone who was related to an ANZAC that they ‘had to get over it?’
When our current bias of society begins to acknowledge and start preventing the hardships Indigenous people still face, Australia’s quality of social progression improves along with Indigenous people’s own quality of life. Suicide rates will drop, standards of living will rise, education will further progress and become more accessible and there will be more opportunities.
When our Australian Constitution begins to abolish Terra Nullius then maybe it can close the gaps.
When Adam Goodes finally called it out, it finally feels like we are heard.
And maybe this is just the beginning…
